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Friday, February 13, 2015

Students have their say

Our visit to Ancaster Senior Public School finished off with
a roundtable discussion with a couple of dozen grade 8 students, facilitated by
principal Lisa Neale and two students.

We visitors were also able to pose questions and get
feedback from the students.

My question was: “I spend a lot of time working with
teachers who have a wide variety of opinions about the value of using
technology in their classes or courses.Some are not keen to incorporate it due to their existing pedagogical
beliefs and values, and some are sort of afraid. What advice would you give
these teachers?”

The resulting discussion was fascinating and more complex
than I anticipated.

·Some students reiterated previous points, where
they stressed that technology has its place, but is not suited to every task
for every student.

·Some like pencil and paper for writing, for
creating, for brainstorming, for illustrating and sketching prototypes, and
more.

·They noted the value of having a paper backup
for study notes, or at least an offline file to use, in case technology fails
at the wrong moment.

·They expressed the appeal and novelty of doing a
project solely through using library books.

·They also talked about the importance of
face-to-face discussion, particularly at the beginning of a project where the
direction is being decided, and the subtleties of the views of collaborators
are important.

However, many also spoke of how tech has transformed their
learning.

One young woman said she had moved a lot and attended a variety
of schools, and that Ancaster, with strong leadership from Lisa and the
resulting widespread integration of technology into teaching and learning, “Was
a whole new level of awesome.”

Following up, another student noted that teachers should
realize that opening up the classroom to the online world yields much stronger
projects.

One young man spoke near the end, with the following
opinion, “These teachers should step up and be professional. They are supposed
to be preparing us for the future.”

What a great and far-ranging discussion. These outstanding
young people were so willing to incorporate the best of the past, present and
future into their education.

And it is simply this openness that I hope I can pass along
to my colleagues.